Transparency activists and Opposition parties have questioned the government’s logic behind denying information to Parliament on three donation funds under its purview.
They slammed Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who repeatedly emphasises transparency, of turning the Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations (PM CARES) Fund, PM’s National Relief Fund and the National Defence Fund into “private fiefdoms” akin to the opaque electoral bonds scheme that was scrapped by the Supreme Court.
On Monday, a report in The Indian Express cited unnamed sources as saying that the PMO had asked the Lok Sabha secretariat not to allow questions from MPs on these funds as they were “constituted entirely with voluntary public contribution and not from any allocation out of the Consolidated Fund of India”.
Anjali Bhardwaj of information watchdog Satark Nagrik Sanghatan told The Telegraph: “This is Electoral Bonds 2.0.... This can lead to these funds being used for quid pro quo, extortion and regulatory inaction, just like the electoral bonds. The ED and the CBI are probing companies that bought these bonds. There was regulatory inaction on pharma companies. It is possible that these three funds can be used for extortion and protection from investigative agencies.”
Anjali Bhardwaj of information watchdog Satark Nagrik Sanghatan Wikipedia
“The PM, home minister, finance minister and the defence minister are ex officio trustees of PM CARES. How is the government claiming that it is not a public authority? Is this a private trust of the BJP? Then why is tax money being put in a private trust of the BJP?” she added.
Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative director Venkatesh Nayak said: “These funds are not private entities as the PM and other ministers are trustees in ex officio capacities. Exemptions given in urgency for these funds under the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act and the Income Tax Act indicate the public purpose of these funds. A citizen should have access to any information on such a fund for public purpose, or at least their elected representatives should.”
“I hope the Opposition moves a privilege motion for the violation of their constitutional freedom of speech in Parliament,” he added.
In January, Delhi High Court had observed that the PM CARES fund retained its right to privacy under the RTI Act even though it was managed, supervised or controlled by the government.
Nayak has been fighting a legal battle to bring the fund — created during the pandemic — within the RTI ambit. He said the fund had received over ₹9,000 crore from PSUs within a year of its inception. “This is public money,” he added.
“These instructions have come directly from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Office to the Lok Sabha secretariat. In effect, MPs have been told not to ask questions about these funds,” the Congress posted on X.
“This raises serious questions: MPs represent the people, so why are they being stopped from asking questions in the public interest? Why is the Modi government afraid of accountability? Why block questions on thousands of crores of public money? What is the government trying to hide from the people of India? Will Parliament now function according to Modi’s orders rather than the Constitution? This is not transparency. This is authoritarian control. An attack on Parliament itself,” it added.
The CPM said it was “a brazen attempt to undermine parliamentary democracy and shield the executive from accountability”.
Trinamool MP Sagarika Ghose posted on X: “Journalists can’t question and now even Parliament can’t ask questions about the crores going into totally opaque bodies like PM Cares.”
CPIML-Liberation general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya wondered why the government was so fearful of “subjecting public money comprising CSR and public donations to public scrutiny”.
